From the frescos in the Library of the Vatican showing The Laestrygonians Attacking Ulysses's Ships dating from 40-30BC, to Henry Moore's Odyssey from 1944, the story of Odysseus and his long journey home at the end of the Trojan War has captured the imagination of artists from the ancient world to the present day. Commissioned from the artist by the family of the present owner in the 1960s and here presented for the first time, Salvador Dalí's Odyssey now joins this artistic canon. The commission for this series closely followed the completion of Dalí's masterpiece Tuna Fishing (Descharnes 1267; Ile de Bendor, Fondation Paul Ricard), which he completed in the summer of 1967. This painting 'combined all the styles he had worked in: Surrealism, "refined Pompierism", pointillism, action painting, tachism, geometrical abstraction, Pop art, Op art and psychedelic art' (R. Descharnes, Salvador Dal, The Paintings 1904-1989, Cologne, 1994, p. 567). Indeed the present group of works reflects the same formal and conceptual concerns, which the artist himself described as "a revival of representational art, which was underestimated by everyone except the Surrealists throughout the period of so-called 'avant-garde' art" (Dalí, quoted in op.cit.). Throughout his career, Dalí executed illustrations for editions of classical literature, including Don Quixotte, The Divine Comedy and Macbeth. However unlike these, his Odyssey has remained a private commission and has not been published. Thus this group of works offers new and exceptional insight into Dalí's original and fecund relationship with classical and literary tradition, and his constant search for an avant-garde re-interpretation of myths and iconographies. PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

Les fourmis d'or

细节

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Les fourmis d'or
gold paint, watercolour, pen and India ink and pencil on paper
17¾ x 15¼ in. (45 x 38.8 cm.)

来源

Acquired directly from the artist circa 1968-1970, and thence by descent to the present owner.

荣誉呈献

Cornelia Svedman

csvedman@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2561

拍品专文

This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Robert and Nicolas Descharnes.